Google might be forced to sell its Chrome browser, and while it’s hard to imagine anyone else running the ship, there’s plenty of interest from Google’s competition in OpenAI, Perplexity, and Yahoo.
Amid the ongoing antitrust lawsuit against Google, new details have revealed that there are three big names willing to buy Chrome if Google is indeed forced to sell off the browser.
Those names start with OpenAI, Google’s biggest rival in the AI space today. The company told a judge that it would be interested in buying Chrome as reported by Reuters earlier this week. The OpenAI exec who said this added that the company had made a bid with Google regarding leveraging Google’s search tech within ChatGPT, a bid which Google shot down. An email from OpenAI to Google said that using “Google’s API… would enable us to provide a better product to users.”
Perplexity next revealed that it was interested in buying Chrome as The Verge reports. Perplexity’s Dmitry Shevelenko said that he “[thinks] we could do it] in response to the judge’s question regarding if anyone else could run Chromium at the same scale as Google without diminishing quality or charging for it.
Finally, it’s now been revealed that Yahoo is also interested in buying Chrome, as the company has apparently been working on its own web browser project. A “prototype” of that custom browser is apparently in the works, but Yahoo Search General Manager Brian Provost says that buying Chrome would be faster in terms of ramping up scale, adding that Chrome is “arguably the most important strategic player on the web” and estimating that Yahoo’s search engine market share could jump into “double digits” if it were to buy Chrome.
What do you think? Would you continue to use Chrome with any of these brands behind the wheel?
More on Chrome:
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- Google Chrome policy update restricts shady affiliate extensions, like Honey
- Google touts 2x phishing, scam protection by enabling Chrome’s Enhanced Safe Browsing
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